5.5 miles away

 After today's 5.15 mile run I'm sitting at 521.55 miles for the year which puts me roughly 5.5 miles away from surpassing my 2024 total mileage for the year.  With nearly 5 months left in 2025 I'm proud of that accomplishment.

Also today:  5.15 miles at 8:44 pace with an average HR of 139.  A couple comparable are 5.01 miles on May 2nd at 8:46 pace with an average HR of 148 and 5.18 on July 2nd at 8:53 pace with an average HR of 150.  It's always good to have confirmation of recent gains.  Also encouraging to see my HR lowering on easy runs as I build aerobic fitness... it seemed until recently that no matter how easy I ran, my HR was still overly elevated so this is positive progress for sure.

Every time I get out of shape I develop serious doubts that I will ever be able to build up my fitness again, and every time it seems to get a little bit harder but so far I've always been able to pull through in the end.  

Miles and more miles

 Another workout today brought to you by Garmin Coach.  10 min warm up, 4 X 5 minutes at 7:55 with 2 minute active recovery, then 10 minute cool down.  Ran 7:33, 7:32, 7:14, 7:35 pace for the intervals, running by feel.  Maybe a bit harder than prescribed but certainly manageable.  

Hitting these workouts are fun but the real key is the mileage.  I'm hitting 5 milers on the reg now which is not a lot but a lot more than I've been able to handle for years.  Wednesday, Thursday, Friday will be taper and recovery days before Saturday's race.  After that, I'm going back to base building.  Might put something on the Garmin Coach calendar and let Garmin dictate the workouts for a while longer since it's been working so well.  

I looked back at my training from 2019 and it seemed like things really rounded out once I started upping my long runs.  I've been maxed at 8 miles for quite a while now so time to get those back into the double digits.  More base building into September and then start hitting the workouts again as the weather gets cooler.  

Keep building that base

 August has started and I need to keep building that base.  I feel stronger and fitter than I have for a while.  Not top fitness but just enough fitness that I can actually start doing some real training.  Workouts have been limited so far but I've increased my mileage and am finally back to the point to where running 5 miles is relatively easy.  

I ran 5 on Friday, Saturday, and Monday and Sunday I took off but only because I was busy cleaning all day.  I was on my feet all day and still feel like I got some work in even if it wasn't true aerobic effort.

Saturday I ran a progression run with 1 mile warm up at 8:34 then 7:44, 7:20, and 7:02 before an 8:00 minute cooldown.  It was a good solid effort but not overly taxing.  I have been extra cautious to not overdo it and burn myself out.

This Saturday is race week so should take it relatively easy this week and let my body recover.  Not sure if I'm quite at the point I would like to be but I've been consistent and put in work so we'll see where it gets me.

Fast Finish

After a recovery day on Tuesday and a day off (with some brisk walking) on Wednesday, I finished up the month strong with some sprints.  

Another Garmin workout:  15 min warmup - 3 X 15 seconds sprints with 3:00 rest recovery -  5 minute job then 3 X 15 seconds sprints with 3:00 rest recovery - them 10 minute cooldown

I must admit that this wouldn't be the type of workout I would normally think of doing.  But honestly, it was quite effective.  I ran to the track for my warm up and did the sprints on the track.  The 15 seconds equated to about 90 meters.  Was approaching 100 meters on the last one.  I ran them at 90-95% effort.  

Sprinting is not something I do very often these days.  Even a month or two ago I don't know if my fitness was built up to a point where I would have wanted to try it.., but I'm feeling a lot more put together lately and my body was up to the task. I can always tell it was a good workout by the mild level of fatigue I feel after.  

The other thing about these Garmin workouts is that they include some walk breaks and rest.  Also not something I'm used to doing.  Good think about the workout setup is that it automatically logs the rests separately as different "laps".  Just makes it hard when I log my miles.  Normally, I try not to include walking on my log but its impossible to separate from the digital stats.  I think moving forward I'll just include the walking mileage and pace in my workouts.  It inflates the mileage a bit and deflates the average pace even more but I think moving forward I'll just save myself the trouble and mental gymnastics and log it all.

Last day of July.  114.81 miles for the month.  This is the most miles I've run in a month in years (since May of 2022 to be exact).  I'm at 495 miles for the year and need roughly 32 miles to surpass my 2024 mileage for the year.  And after years of on again off again training where I barely maintained fitness but never really saw much gains I'm starting to really feel some fitness.  

August 9th will be the first test to quantify my progress.  Upcoming goals...  get my VO2 max back up in the 50s.  Get my weight back down under 180.  Log a few more 100 mile months and hopefully a 1000 mile year.  And eventually... break 20 minutes for a 5K.

hit a hundo

 As of today I'm at 107.51 miles for the month.  I broke the arbitrary 100 mile barrier over the weekend with days to spare.

Today, I ran 4.24 miles at 9:01 pace and it was a bit of a struggle.  My legs didn't even want to go 9 minute pace and were just plain fatigued.  

I had some fairly decent efforts on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (5.18 miles on both Saturday and Sunday at 8:41 pace following my speed workout on Friday)

Time will tell if today's effort was the start to some recovery or if ultimately I just need a day off.  Main thing is that I'm finally starting to really feel fit and good about my running so don't want to overdo anything and set myself back.  

Right now I'm exhausted.  Always a fine line between pushing to exhaustion and allowing space for recovery.

Garmin Workout #2

Garmin coach finally assigned me an actual workout.  15 minute warmup @ 9:20 pace, 8 X 1 minute at 6:50 pace with 3 minute recoveries at 11:15 pace and 10 minute recovery @ 9:20 pace.

A couple notes:

I am really liking the workout feature on the Garmin.  It's like wave-lights lite where I can just run and not overthink my pace, time or effort.  I just follow the watch's cues and try to keep the pace in the range.

I ran a lot faster than the prescribed pace for the most part.  I averaged 6:28 pace on the 8 X 1 minute parts and hovered around the 9 minute pace for the recovery.  3 minutes at my easy pace seemed to be plenty of recovery and 9 minutes seems pretty easy after coming off 6:30 pace.  

I had no problem completing the workout and ran the cooldown in the 8:20 range.

All in all, I wound up running 6.57 miles at an average of 8:13 pace.  

And I feel good afterwards.  I'm tired but don't feel like I overdid it.  Just a euphoric level of fatigue and a general feeling that I'm building fitness.  Most encouraging is that these efforts are not painful.  I haven't had to push through any pain barriers since the beginning of July.  

15 days until my 5K.  92.91 miles for July so far.  473 miles on the year 

Feeling a bit off

 After a stellar July so far, my momentum was slightly impeded by a routine scheduled medical procedure that required me to fast for roughly 40 hours.  This required a day off on Wednesday.  The day off left me feeling off and the fasting left me feeling not fast.  

I settled for running an extremely easy run this morning.  I left the house with a plan of at least getting 1 mile in... that got stretched to 2, which got stretched to 20 minutes, which got stretched to 3 miles, which got stretched to 30 minutes.  Finished with 3.13 miles at 9:35 pace and a 132 average heart rate.  It was a situation where I started off not feeling great but felt stronger and stronger as I found my groove.

I'm back to eating and waiting for my digestive system to steady out.  Hopefully by tomorrow I'll be rested, recovered, and ready to go.

I'm at 86.34 miles for the month of July and barring any unforeseen setback should easily clear 100 miles this month.  This will be the most running I've done this year and if I can run more than 101.16 it will be the most I've done in 3 years.  More important than the numbers though is how I'm feeling.  

Last September when I broke the 100 mile barrier I really had to push it at the end and wound up a bit burnt out.  I dropped to 60 miles in October and just about took November and December off.  This month I have 7 days to run 14 miles.  I feel energized and think that this months 100 could just be a stepping stone to even more miles next month.  I don't want to get too far ahead of myself but might even start thinking about sniffing 1000 miles for the year.